Bbenzon
Description
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. Intellectually, I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
MY BLOGS
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New Savanna
http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
LATEST ARTICLES ( 7356 )
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The Robot Lawyer Was a Super Dumb Idea [Peter Thiel, Scourge of Lawyers,...
So, a 15 year old kid, Michael Browder, gets a parking ticket. So he wrote a bot to contest parking tickets and soon found himself lending it out to his friends... Read more
Posted on 07 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Night Lights
Posted on 06 February 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Art and National Restoration: Denmark in the 19th Century, Japan in the 20th
Sebastian Smee, Scarred by defeat, they gave birth to a golden age of Danish art, The Washington Post, February 3, 2023. Early in the 19th century Denmark becam... Read more
Posted on 06 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
To Greener Times
Posted on 06 February 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Howard Rheingold Reflects on Governance in 6 Online Communities He's Been a...
Howard Rheingold, Online governance: Six Case Studies, Feb 10, 2022. How should online communities be governed? I’m not concerned here with Facebook and... Read more
Posted on 06 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Domestic Tranquility [be It Ever So Humble]
Posted on 06 February 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Mental Events Comprise Distributed Activity Across the Whole Brain
Better assumptions: (1) Mental events comprise distributed activity across the whole brain; (2) Brain behavior are linked by degenerate, many-to-one... Read more
Posted on 05 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum - Justice for Animals
Cows dying in a barn fire, chimpanzees struggling to survive in a shrinking jungle, and whales stranding with kilos of plastic in their stomachs. Animals are... Read more
Posted on 05 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
No, I Haven't Forgotten About the Blue-green Mug [Friday Fotos on Saturday]
Posted on 04 February 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Some Miscellaneous Thoughts on ChatGPT, Stories, and Mechanical Interpretability
I started playing with ChatGPT on December 1, 2023 and made my first post on December 3. Including this post, I’ve made 54 posts about ChatGPT. Read more
Posted on 04 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Weight of History [path Dependence]
me, when anyone asks about why US/English spelling, grammar, law, measurements, voting systems, etc, aren't updated from archaic 18th c (and earlier) forms... Read more
Posted on 04 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Can Physics Be Too Speculative? An Honest Opinion [Sabine Hossenfelder]
From the YouTube description: I was asked to write an article addressing the question whether some research in physics has become too speculative. Read more
Posted on 04 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Down by the Water
Posted on 03 February 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Literary Criticism is for Just What Exactly? On the Occasion of His Retirement, ...
Jennifer Schuessler, What Is Literary Criticism For?, NYTimes, Feb. 3, 2023. This is a consideration – not a review, exactly – of John Guillory's new book,... Read more
Posted on 03 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is This the Real Thing, Or is It Dr. Pepper? I Can't Tell from the Photo and I...
You know what they say, a sip is worth a 1000 words plus 3 photographs. Read more
Posted on 03 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Take a Break, It's Good for the Mind [naps!]
A.C. Shilton, How to Tell If Your Brain Needs a Break, NYTimes, Feb. 3, 2022. It’s 1:02 p.m. Do you know what your brain is doing? Read more
Posted on 03 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Proposal to Extend Manhattan into NY Harbor with 1790 Acres of Landfill
If Mayor Adams succeeds in expanding Manhattan with this proposal, he will single handedly disprove the notion of American stagnation also go down in... Read more
Posted on 02 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
ChatGPT: Tantalizing Afterthoughts in Search of Story Trajectories [induction...
Several times During my undergraduate years I would finish a paper, turn it in, the then Wham! it hit me. That should have been my theme. Read more
Posted on 02 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
It's Time for Some Visual Jazz
Posted on 02 February 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Training Costs of Deep Learning Systems, Including the Human Mind
Note that that graph is training cost, NOT inference cost. Training is a single fixed cost used to create ChatGPT, running it in practice is much, much... Read more
Posted on 02 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
